"Brand-budding" among top ideas of 2013

2 January 2014

New retail technologies, adopting a start-up culture and the rise of "brand-budding" were among the innovative ideas that caught the attention of warc.com users in the last 12 months.

Marketers are always keen to use established and emerging channels in new ways, helping explain why a Warc report featuring 15 case studies from pioneering brands like McDonald's, IKEA and Oreo was the year's single most-viewed paper on the subject of innovation. For more details about the most read papers on Warc in 2013, visit our Most Read page.

Agencies are also adapting to the demands of the digital world by changing their business models. One example of this is Ogilvy's "persuasive creativity", an approach empowering every employee of the global ad agency network to come up with ideas, and the subject of the second most-popular article in this area during 2013.

In keeping with the need to transform the tried and tested, Guy Murphy, worldwide planning director at JWT and Warc's third most-popular innovation paper of 2013, argued "push" messaging is no longer desirable. Enhancing products, adding value and "brand-budding" – where partnerships such as that between Google Android and KitKat bring benefits to consumers – are all now essential tasks for marketers.

Taking fourth place behind Murphy's paper was a discussion of how retail stores are evolving thanks to the rise of tools from mobile wallets to 3D printing, augmented reality mirrors and even digitally-connected coat hangers.

Start-ups from Silicon Valley have inspired many of these processes – either directly or indirectly – and the final innovation paper of the top five outlined what agency Wieden+Kennedy has learned from working closely with many of these exciting young enterprises.